Spoiler Alert ! Andhadhun, I think was one of the best movies to hit the screens this year and Sriram Raghavan’s return to fine form. Even wrote a piece on it but I honestly never gave the ending much thought until Sandeep brought it up the other day. Yeah, I guess this is what happens when you start writing your own reviews and stop looking up movie info online, you miss out on perspectives and trivia. Personally I do that to stay original, an impressionable mind I have, alas. Back when I watched the film in the theatre nextdoor, the part where Ayushman Khurrana’s character hits the can with his cane was just an indication that he was not blind anymore.The only fact that registered in my mind rather I was receptive of, was the simple explanation that he had moved on having escaped from the shady doctor and the femme fatale thanks to the random rabbit. Now that Hafeez had also asked me about the ending I had little choice but to watch the ending again, thanks to the Netflix progress bar.
Now to get down to the brass tacks, this is what I found, the narrative of the film ends from the audience’s perpsective when the doctor and the blind Akash are driving in a car with Tabu in the boot. The doctor tells him he would give him a cut once Tabu’s liver is sold and that he can get his cornea replaced too, if its a match.Akash doesn’t say much, rather he’s contemplating. Then the doctor dishes out his piece of instant philosophy, Whats’s life, it all depends on the “liver”. A tractor passes, carrying a bunch of people singing prayers aloud, chimes and all (1). With that we see the car driving down the road , off into the distance with a lonley tree standing guard by the side (2). That’s essentially where us viewers get off from the car too and the tree is our landmark for a reason, I can’t but help feel.Next, we see Radhika Apte’s Sohpie meeting Akash somewhere in Europe, as the movie prompts and we are at a point where she asks, and then?, echoing our thoughts.
The movie cuts back to scene in the car and we are at the point where the doctor just finishes his liver line. No chants, no chimes, no tractor this time around though, conspicuous by absence as they say (3). Akash, in his own version is now righteous, trying to convince the doctor otherwise when there’s thumping in the boot and the doctor stops to put Tabu out of her misery. He gets out and walks over to the boot. You see that the car has stopped by the tree (4) . To me atleast, this is proof enough of what happened, with the tree and the spot where the car stops being the tell-tale signs, literally. It’s safe to assume now that Akash is indeed lying to Sophie and most probably he decided to join the doctor in his little scheme. But then, is it that simple again, why the one eyed rabbit? why the cane with a rabbit carved on the knob in his arms?. Red herrings, maybe. Nolan is not the only one who can spin a top, I guess.
gopakumarpurushothaman 